Debian Women Mentoring Program

Welcome to the mentoring program!

The goal of the Mentoring Program is to support and guide anyone who wants to contribute to Debian (but who might not be sure where or how to start) as they take their first steps.

What do we mean by mentoring?

Mentors involved in the program are people who have experience in some Debian-related skills, and who would like to help other people improve their skills in those areas. We expect that mentoring will be mainly conducted in 1:1 relationships which might include a fairly broad set of activities, such as the following:

It is important to understand that mentors are not intended to do the actual work involved in solving the problem that the mentee is working on. That would defy the point of the program, which is to have the mentees learn new skills and increase their interaction with and contributions to Debian. It should also be noted that a mentor will not necessarily be able (or willing) to sponsor a mentee's package, even if the mentor is a Debian Developer and the agreed project involves packaging.

How the program works

Potential mentors can email mentoring@women.debian.org. We are deeply appreciative of the people who are willing to volunteer their time to help others in this way, and we hope you will find it interesting and rewarding.

Potential mentees can email mentoring@women.debian.org to be matched with a potential mentor. Please explain in your email the kinds of activities you are interested in being involved in, and the kind of help you are looking for. We will do our best to match you up with a mentor who is interested in helping out with those things.

Once a mentor and mentee have been paired up, it is essentially up to you to decide together what you will do. Please note that we expect both mentor and mentee to be able to devote at least the amount of time required to get into contact and discuss what you plan to do. Beyond that, time commitments may differ considerably. We hope mentees will be able to commit the amount of time required to do the tasks they are interested in, and we hope mentors will be able to commit enough time to help out their mentees with their tasks. However, bearing in mind that people's lives and workloads can change, we recognize that people may have to vary their level of commitment at times.

If you have any problems with the mentoring program or with your mentor or mentee, you can contact mentoring@women.debian.org, and we will do our best to sort things out.